Monday, November 29, 2010

If ever there were a reason to cancel your Vonage service, you need look no further than what a respectable SIP provider plus a soft client can bring you.

For those just tuning in, the digital voice revolution is in full swing, and by now even the TELCOs have gotten the message that voice over plain old telephone sets is just so twentieth century. A telephone is just hardware. And telephone service is what people really want. And to the extent that you or I can use that service in any manner we want, the happier we will be.

Around 2004, in rushed Vonage to a market space that promised cheaper US calls from anywhere in the world. Just add IP. And what a wonderful thing it was to be able to plug in a plain-Jane telephone into a voice telephone adapter and get phone service just the way we were used to: A dial tone, familiar re-purposed hardware, and voice quality that no one would confuse with having originated at a computer. No goofy headsets, no CRTs. Just dial like your mamma taught you, and all was well with the world.

But then sometime between 2004 and 2010 things changed. Suddenly, and for no justifiable reason, I was paying more for Vonage phone service than I had ever paid for plain old wired phone service. 50 USD or more per month was starting to beg the question as to what I was getting out of this deal--other than the ability to put my phone about anywhere in the world that there is an Internet connection.

Well, enough is enough. I cut my Vonage service, saved buckets of loot, and now can make calls from the comfort of my hacienda or from the convenience of my iPhone. All in three easy steps: